Hunt with a Rifle, Not a Shotgun

Story time…I was about 17 years old when I went on a camping trip with my friends in the middle of nowhere, TN. It was my first camping/hunting trip with my friends and I was very excited. We had no adult supervision and I was very excited to say the least. Now, I am not sure if you know what happens when you put 7 guys together in the woods with weapons and no adults, but let’s just say the collective IQ of the group dropped by about 200 points. And it wasn’t that high to begin with!

After settling in and establishing camp, we decided to go for a hunt. I use that term loosely because we had no idea what was in season and had no strategy for hunting. To us, hunting simply meant loading up in the bed of a pickup with shotguns and shooting at anything that moved while driving through the woods. Why shotguns? Because with a shotgun, we thought, maybe we would just get lucky and hit something! Bad idea! Let’s just say it was only the grace of God that brought us all back to camp that night alive, and after our huge hunting expedition we brought back dinner and ate like kings…hot dogs! Since we hit nothing, we had to go the town store to find dinner.

My fear is that too often we set out on a spiritual journey, together or individually, with far too little direction or strategy. We rise in the morning, take a spiritual shotgun approach and simply hope that we hit something! I know I have. I often start the year, the month, or even just the day with no clear achievable spiritual goal and, to my dismay, at the end of the day I have achieved the same. It is this kind of thinking that perpetuates a “New Years resolution” approach to spiritual growth. January 1st rolls around and we say to ourselves that this year we will be more giving. More giving?! That’s a little abstract, don’t you think?! That’s like going on a “hunt” in the bed of a pickup truck! And let me tell you from experience, when you do that you go home hungry! I don’t want to wake up 5 years from now on January 1st and realize that my new year’s wish is the same as it is today. I want growth. I yearn for movement, and I desperately desire that movement to be forward.

It’s time for an awakening. Perhaps it’s starts on the individual level and then moves to a corporate level. Instead of saying you want to be more giving, try pledging you will give to the kingdom of God a total of 2% more than you have in the past. Instead of saying you want to be more loving, try taking inventory of the people in your life and writing down the names off 3 people you need to love better and the ways you intend on doing that. As a family of God, perhaps we should not simply say our vision is to bring people to Jesus. Perhaps we should look at what ways we are already doing that and throw all of our resources behind that effort. Or perhaps we should evaluate together where we are in the city and focus on our neighbors to fulfill that vision.

Whatever the case may be, I want to encourage you. Individually, I want to encourage you to focus your spiritual journey, to be intentional and deliberate about your walk. Collectively, I want to lift us up as a family. Can you imagine what our walk could be if we became more deliberate and intentional as a family?! Because one thing I think we will discover together is that it is much easier and more productive to set out on a hunt with a specific game in mind and a rifle in hand, than it is to ride in the back of a moving truck shooting a shotgun at anything that moves. I promise that if we begin to do that, it will greatly reduce the chances of us coming back from the hunt empty-handed.


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